The Cube iwork5X has arrived, and it’s impressive. The build and design look very similar to what I saw on the Cube Thinker i35, their premium Core M3-7Y30 laptop. But unlike the Surface Book screen clad Thinker i35, this screen flips around 360 degrees converting it into a tablet. But one of the cons is the weight, at 1.68 kilos, it’s the heaviest of the Apollo Lake powered devices I’ve looked at.
part of the reason is the 360-degree hinges means it has to be heavily counterweighted down to stop it from flipping up. A trade off from the design. So the build is really the best yet, I’ve seen on any of the Apollo Lakes. The screen is covered wit ha touch digitizer glass that is sadly nonlaminated. The gap is around 1.5mm, but since the glass is not covered with a screen protector and the screen is both vibrate and bright. It’s not distracting.
Windows 10 Chinese was the installed OS. I’ve now switched over to an SSD with English and the backup of drivers restored without any issues. The touchpad is great, a full precision touchpad so gestures can be disabled and customised via the Windows mouse and touchpad settings menu.
The iwork5X battery is 38Wh as listed on the battery itself and the CPU has a nice 1mm thick copper heatsink over it. The SSD slot looks like it would take even the largest 2280 size. But it supports only 2242 and 2260 M.2 SATA3 SSD’s.
The keyboard key travel is good, with a firm feels and not as much travel as others, but so far good to type on.
So the cons are no 6GB like other models, it’s heavy. Really nothing else at this point but I need some time to sit down and use it more.